The Father of My Daughter

No Drama Theatre returned to the intimate Boys School space in Smock Alley Theatre for a distinctly multi-media appearance in the Scene and Heard Festival.

Eileen (Helen McGrath) is burdened by griefs public and private. The public knows that her husband (Greg Freegrove) shockingly killed himself on the night of their daughter’s birthday. They don’t know that the reason Eileen came home to find his body in the bathroom that night was because she had left her daughter and husband to continue her affair with her work colleague (Andrei Callanan). Consumed with a guilt that she cannot explain without inviting judgement, she is further tormented by her husband’s unusual choice of suicide note – a message on a tape recorder. This vivid reminder of his living presence keeps her looping around and around their time together, from their first accidental meeting in a crowded cafe where he politely asked if he could share her table, to her unlocking the bathroom door on their fateful last night.

It’s thrilling to see the difficult playing space used so well by writer/director Ciaran Treanor and producer Andrei Callanan. Multimedia projection of video footage of the once happy couple made it seem as if we were glimpsing inside Eileen’s head and reliving her memories as she reacts to them, while the use of recorded sound cues for moments of physical theatre made them truly pop, in particular Eileen’s desperate hammering on the bathroom door. Greg Freegrove’s sinister reappearance as a spectre with a distinctly voodoo air was made even more startling when the lights went out revealing his clothes to be daubed in glow in the dark patterns. Indeed there was a hint of the Babadook about him, as what is left of him in his wife’s mind has become dark and twisted, eager to urge her to suicide.

Helen McGrath ably carries the play as a woman looping around and around in a depressive spiral, wondering if a good, quiet man killed himself because of what she did, even though his suicide note didn’t blame her. Can she ever know for sure? A fantasy dance sequence appropriately scored by the Bynon Remix of Sofi Tukker’s ‘Good Time Girl’ sees Eileen and her two lovers break out of their looping flashbacks and guilt-trips into something new and strange. As Elevator Repair Service and tgSTAN showed in theatre festivals past even the simplest choreography erupting out of nowhere and being sustained creates a moment of pure theatre. Treanor and his frequent collaborator Noel Cahill have used rap and sustained rhyming before, largely for laughs, but here things become more incantatory; at times, given the subject matter, veering towards verse drama.

The Father of My Daughter is like a theatrical concentrate, it only runs for a spare twenty minutes, but it packs the emotional punch of a longer play.

4/5

This isn’t my Desk

At Large Theatre move up from Trinity’s Players Theatre to the considerably larger space of Smock Alley’s main stage for a purposefully baffling office satire.

 

Global Futures are hiring. What exactly Global Futures do is not clear. But they are hiring. And firing. Sometimes they get ahead of themselves, as when B (Darcy Donnellan) arrives in the office and nervously tries to find out what she should do from A (Alice ni Bheolain), only to disconcertingly find that she’s there to replace her, just as soon as Management (Maureen Rabbitt) throws her out of the building. New co-worker C (Ciaran Treanor) is completely unhelpful, locked as he is in a titanic struggle over regaining his rightful desk, Housekeeping (Dominik Domresonski, Sarah O’Farrell) are deliberately intrusive, but Documentation (Orla Devlin) is seductive and eternal. Well, mostly eternal, as a client visit signals a shake-up. Management begins to unspool completely under the stress, and only desperate measures, and intern seedlings can save the day.  Or maybe not.

Written and directed by Kate Cosgrave This isn’t my Desk almost serves as a bizarre and funny summation of a number of previous outings by these theatre-makers: Treanor’s role in The Trial, Donnellan’s turn in Nowhere Now, and artistic director Grainne Curistan’s own office satire The Meeting. There’s also a fleeting nod to Spike Jonze’s Her as B becomes enamoured of her documentation. I’m not going to pretend that I understood this play; my regular theatre cohort Fiachra MacNamara was equally unsure as to who exactly C’s poignant flashback monologues were about; but it really didn’t matter. Despite being frequently baffled I was always engaged and usually highly amused. Management’s climatic rant about her underlings was a comedic highlight to set beside C’s desk being downsized in a deft visual gag much to his subsequent emailed fury.

3/5

Dublin Theatre Festival: 10 Plays

Tickets go on sale for the 2016 Dublin Theatre Festival at 10:00am on Tuesday August 16th. Here are 10 shows to keep an eye on.

Helen & I 27^th September – October 1^st Civic Theatre

The great Annabelle Comyn decamps to Druid to direct an original script by newcomer Meadhbh McHugh. Rebecca O’Mara is the ‘I’, returning home to fence with older sister Helen (Cathy Belton) as their father lies dying. It’s always great when Druid tour, and hopefully this will be a return to form for Comyn after the bafflingly praised debacle of The Wake.

 

A Midsummer Night’s Dream 28^th September – October 1^st Grand Canal

Sean Holmes, responsible for the recent, storming Plough & Stars in the Abbey, returns with co-director Stef O’Driscoll for a Shakespearean rampage. This looks to be very much a ‘This was not Chekhov’ production, but in the best sense, as the text is stripped down to 90 minutes, with live grunge band, nerf gun battle, and an epic food fight.

 

Don Giovanni 29^th September – October 2^nd Gaiety

Roddy Doyle has for some reason decided to update the libretto to Mozart’s opera about the womaniser par excellence. Eyebrows must be raised at the amount of ‘versions’ he’s doing versus original writing in recent years. Pan Pan’s Gavin Quinn will be directing, while Sinead McKenna follows up her acclaimed diabolist lighting design for The Gigli Concert’s finale with some bona fide operatics.

 

The Father 29^th September – October 15^th Gate

Just when Michael Colgan had lurched into self-parody by programming The Constant Wife he conjures an ace from nowhere: a piece of new writing from France that has swept all before it on Broadway and Piccadilly. Ethan McSweeney directs Owen Roe as a man suffering from Alzheimer’s, while the supporting cast includes Peter Gaynor and Charlotte McCurry, and Francis O’Connor is set designer.

 

Guerilla 30^th September – October 2^nd Project Arts Centre

It wouldn’t be a festival without some fellow PIIGS getting bolshy about neo-liberalism, the failure of Europe, and the age of austerity. This year it’s El Conde de Torrefiel company from Spain, presenting the confused inner universe of a group of people inhabiting the same city and collective consciousness, represented by projected text over an electronica concert, Tai Chi class, and conference.

 

Death at Intervals 4^th October – October 8^th Smock Alley

Trailing clouds of glory from its Galway premiere comes an adaptation of Jose Saramango’s novel directed by Kellie Hughes. Olwen Fouere is the grim reaper in retirement, accompanied by her faithful musician Raymond Scannell. Death likes to dance too. A mixture of music, theatre, and dance, with Scannell also co-composing with Alma Kelliher; but he did also compose Alice in Funderland…

 

Alien Documentary 4^th October – October 8^th Project Arts Centre

I’ve read this production’s pitch repeatedly and I’m damned if I can figure out what it is. Director Una McKevitt is apparently mixing transcriptions of real people’s conversations with invented dialogues of her own imagining, so that’s her writing credit sorted. But what exactly is this show? PJ Gallagher, James Scales, and Molly O’Mahony having unconnected deep/comic conversations for 90 minutes?

 

The Seagull 5^th October – 16^th October Gaiety

Writer Michael West and director Annie Ryan together fashion a modern version of Chekhov’s tale of unrequited loves starring the oft-Fassbendering Derbhle Crotty as well as Genevieve Hulme-Beaman who shone in support in the Abbey’s You Never Can Tell. But will this Corn Exchange production be as hit and miss as their version of Desire Under the Elms that severely downsized O’Neill’s ambition?

 

Donegal 6^th October – 15^th October Abbey

Frank McGuinness’s new musical/play with music/musical play sounds unfortunately like a pilot for the Irish version of Nashville, as a fading country music star is threatened by a new talent she must curry favour with for her own survival. Director Conall Morrison specialises in exuberance, and grand dames Deirdre Donnelly and Eleanor Methven appear beside Once’s Megan Riordan, but can McGuinness make a comeback?

 

First Love 12^th October – 16^th October O’Reilly Theatre

Reminding us why he was important before the age of austerity Michael Colgan directs Gate stalwart Barry McGovern in a solo Beckett outing. This time they head up the road to Belvedere College for a Beckett novella turned into a one-man show about a rather existentialist-sounding refusal of a man to fall in love with a woman who’s in love with him.

Tender Napalm

Good Buzz fill the Boys School of Smock Alley with clay for an energetic performance of Philip Ridley’s acclaimed two-hander.

A red line separates the audience from the players, nestled on an artificial grassy mound rising out of real clay. A man (Stephen Tadgh) and a woman (Ashleigh Dorrell), his attempts at tenderness shook off as irritants. And then the play begins with speculations of imaginative acts of violence as poetry. Tension between the couple is obvious, her attempts at a romantic flashback to her preparations for a party are scuppered by his flights of fancy about ruling a desert island. She joins his desert island fantasy to undercut his bagatelles and claim it for herself. And then as their monologues continue it becomes clear that the party both are preparing for in their flashbacks is where they first met, and began down the slippery slope of love that has led them to their current impasse of resentment and boredom.

Tender Napalm is a hard old slog. Director Sarah Finlay stages the material well with nice use of lighting to pinpoint emotion within these conjured mindscapes, and Tadgh is boundlessly energetic and winning in his portrayal of the optimistic romantic man, but Philip Ridley’s script is a 45 minute lunchtime show unfeasibly elongated to 85 minutes. The revelatory end is obvious from a mile, there is even a hint of (500) Days of Summer about how it informs the desert island, and the originality of the game of loving descriptions of violence disappears once you realise it was contemporaneously used in Sarah Polley’s film Take This Waltz. Exactly how Ridley’s script came to be held up as a masterpiece of new British writing about passionate love is a puzzle given its clumsy handling of a couple grieving their young daughter.

Boys School in Smock Alley is an infuriating theatrical space, permitting no entrances or exits with any subtlety unless one builds a staircase as part of the set. Such claustrophobia focuses attention on the script to an unhealthy degree. And it became noticeable, as an overwhelmingly female crowd whooped up everything the woman said, that Ridley attempts to create a ‘female voice’ in his play by indulging in unapologetic misandry. The man’s descriptions of imaginary violence all end in ecstatic death, whereas the woman explicitly talks of horrifically maiming him, and leaving him alive, blinded and castrated. The man is bombastic and friendly, the woman is, at their first meeting, bossy, and in the present accusatory and petulant. That a female audience lapped this up without thinking it at all problematic was more interesting and revealing than anything Ridley wrote.

Tender Napalm features good performances and assured sound and lighting design, but its script is flabby, lacking in real insight, and, ultimately, disturbingly sexist.

2.5/5

Tender Napalm continues its run at Smock Alley Theatre until the 9^th of July.

The Trial

Disorientation seems to be an aim of No Drama’s production of Kafka’s The Trial. And from the issuing of pencils and paper on arrival for your first plea, to the actors running offstage eschewing a bow, disorientation is certainly achieved.

Somebody must have been telling lies about Josef K (Daniel O’Brien), for he wakes up one morning in his boarding house to find instead of breakfast a brace of mysterious warders (Elaine Fahey, Amélie Laguillon) searching his room. Their senior supervisor (Greg Freegrove) tells K he’s been arrested, but this shouldn’t interfere with K’s work as a senior clerk at the bank; so long as he can make time on Sundays and evenings for interrogation. The charge…? Well, the supervisor’s not authorised to discuss such matters; best take that up with the judge. So begins K’s nightmarish journey thru the gallery of grotesques that surround the Law. ‘Helped’ by the enfeebled Advocate Huld (Louise Dunne), her degraded client eternal client Block and sultry nurse Leni (Sarah Maloney), and the court portrait artist Titorelli (Nikhil Dubey), it is little wonder he despairs.

There are memorable sequences; K’s decision to fire Huld being celebrated by means of a mid-90s rock-out, the actors pairing off and walking back and forth in a muted dance while narration and light jumps between actors. And some fine performances. O’Brien is initially over-indignant, but reins it in for an engagingly desperate K. Dunne eschews the usual hypochondriac bombast Huld, giving us genuine infirmity with a rasping whisper and outraged anger. Freegrove amusingly channels Berkoff as the menacing supervisor, Maloney vamps it up as Leni, and Siobhan Hickey is vivacious and knowing as K’s crush. But No Drama’s production runs for 2 hours 45 minutes with a 10 minute interval, as compared to the Young Vic’s 2015 The Trial which clocked in at 2 hours without an interval. This is absurdly long, and the good performances and sequences get lost in an increasing muddle.

Directors Noel Cahill and David Breen have crafted a very loud interpretation. Eardrums will be ringing from 10 people consistently shouting by the time the court chaplain climactically bawls at the audience mere inches away. The most effective moments are actually the quietest; Huld’s monologues, K’s isolation, or the chorus’ whispered “Josef K”; and starting out turned up to 11 leaves the show nowhere to go. The trip-hop musical introduction outstays its welcome, and a bit of business with everyone hanging on K’s words is protracted beyond the point of comedy – both emblematic of pacing problems that cannot all be blamed on the script. As for the script… The legendary travelator of Richard Jones’ Young Vic staging is obviously beyond the budget of an amateur company, but if the essential elements of Berkoff’s minimalist script (screens, costumes, and all actors save K to have their faces painted) are abandoned, is it really still Berkoff’s adaptation?

There is an astonishingly literal interpretation of K stumbling on pornographic pictures in the court which is far from the mime Berkoff intended. Reducing your staging to a rope, glasses, and one costumed actor in such a difficult space as the Boys School is self-defeating. An ecstatic Dramsoc production of East from Anna Simpson with future Fast Intent founder Nessa Matthews relied on basic props and costumes before launching into outré physicality. Far too often here attempting Berkoff’s physicality after abandoning his supports results in endless busyness of unclear meaning – shouting “I’m a train” may be funny but sadly it’s not redundant when the specified identifiers for it have been discarded. And can Kafka be Kafka if it’s not (to misapply Peter O’Toole’s Ruling Class descriptor) ‘black comedy with tragic relief’? All the elements of Kafka and Berkoff are present, but they do not cohere: we end up with neither paranoid hilarity nor expressionist vim.

The ensemble display admirable commitment and energy, but having set aside so much of Berkoff’s blueprint this production’s continued insistence on presenting a version of his physical theatre almost always gets in the way of this being good theatre.

2/5

The Trial continues its run at Smock Alley until the 18^th of June.

My Own Personal Theatre Awards 2015

All aesthetic judgements are political, but some are more political than others; and if you cannot conceive of great art made by people whose political opinions you do not share, then just maybe you cannot conceive of art at all.

It was ironic that the Irish Times released their Theatre Awards shortlist just after the death of Alan Rickman; whose performance in John Gabriel Borkman the Guardian valorised as one of his great stage achievements; as it drew the mind back to the Irish Times’ magisterial pronouncements on the state of Irish theatre in 2010. John Gabriel Borkman, a co-production between the Abbey and Southbank’s National Theatre, premiered in Dublin before transferring to London, and eventually Broadway. It was seen by around 20,000 people, got rave notices, and received … two nominations from the Irish Times: for costumes and set.

Meanwhile World’s End Lane, which could be seen by 3 people per performance, and so was seen by almost a hundred punters, as opposed to John Gabriel Borkman’s 20,000, received a nod for best production. And of course you ‘couldn’t’ sputter with outrage over this because, inevitably, you hadn’t seen World’s End Lane. Thus has it been lately with the Irish Times Theatre Awards. Such hipster valuations of theatrical worth downgraded the Gate and Abbey, and combined with a persistent boosting of Belfast’s Lyric Theatre, and companies and plays that shared the politico-cultural preoccupations and prejudices of the Irish Times.

But, as with my objections to the Abbey’s 2016 programme, there is little point in speculative grousing. So here are my personal theatre awards for 2015, with the winners in bold. And let me anticipate objections. I did not see DruidShakespeare on tour or The Match Box in Galway. I did not travel up to Belfast to see a single play at the Lyric. But, when you strip out all DruidShakespeare’s nominations, the vast majority of nominations handed out by the Irish Times were for work performed in Dublin. So with more nominees and fewer categories let’s have at it…

Best Production

The Cherry Orchard (The O’Reilly Theatre)

Dancing at Lughnasa (The Lyric/The Gaiety)

Hedda Gabler (The Abbey)

The Night Alive (The Lyric/The Gaiety)

Grounded (Project Arts Centre)

 

Best Director

Annabelle Comyn – Dancing at Lughnasa (The Lyric/The Gaiety) & Hedda Gabler (The Abbey)

David Grindley – The Gigli Concert (The Gate)

Selina Cartmell – Grounded (Project Arts Centre)

Conor McPherson – The Night Alive (The Lyric/The Gaiety)

Patrick Mason – The Importance of Being Earnest (The Gate)

 

Best Actor

Declan Conlon – The Gigli Concert (The Gate)

Marty Rea – The Importance of Being Earnest (The Gate)

James Murphy – The Importance of Being Earnest (Smock Alley)

Brendan Gleeson – The Walworth Farce (The Olympia)

Dylan Coburn Gray – Enjoy (Project Arts Centre)

Best Actress

Catherine McCormack – Dancing at Lughnasa (The Lyric/The Gaiety)

Aislin McGuckin – A Month in the Country (The Gate)

Catherine Walker – Hedda Gabler (The Abbey)

Clare Dunne – Grounded (Project Arts Centre)

Lisa Dwyer Hogg – The Importance of Being Earnest (The Gate)

 

Best Supporting Actor

Declan Conlon – Dancing at Lughnasa (The Lyric/The Gaiety) & Hedda Gabler (The Abbey)

Marty Rea – The Caretaker (The Gate)

Peter Gaynor – Hedda Gabler (The Abbey)

Kevin Shackleton – The Importance of Being Earnest (Smock Alley)

Stijn Van Opstal – The Cherry Orchard (The O’Reilly Theatre)

Domhnall Gleeson – The Walworth Farce (The Olympia)

John Doran – Enjoy (Project Arts Centre)

 

Best Supporting Actress

Marion O’Dwyer – By the Bog of Cats (The Abbey)

Minke Kruyver – The Cherry Orchard (The O’Reilly Theatre)

Kate Stanley Brennan – Hedda Gabler (The Abbey)

Deirdre Donnelly – The Importance of Being Earnest (The Gate)

Elodie Devins – By the Bog of Cats (The Abbey)

 

Best New Play

George Brant – Grounded (Project Arts Centre)

Conor McPherson – The Night Alive (The Lyric/The Gaiety)

Gerard Adlum – The Man in Two Pieces (Theatre Upstairs)

Enda Walsh – The Last Hotel (The O’Reilly Theatre)

Gerard Adlum, Nessa Matthews, Sarah Finlay – Bob and Judy (Theatre Upstairs)

 

Best Set Design

tgSTAN & Damiaan De Schrijver – The Cherry Orchard (The O’Reilly Theatre)

Paul O’Mahony – Dancing at Lughnasa (The Lyric/The Gaiety) & Hedda Gabler (The Abbey)

Francis O’Connor – The Importance of Being Earnest (The Gate) & The Caretaker (The Gate)

Liam Doona – You Never Can Tell (The Abbey)

Alice Power – The Walworth Farce (The Olympia)

Alyson Cummins – The Night Alive (The Lyric/The Gaiety)

 

Best Lighting Design

Chahine Yavroyan – Dancing at Lughnasa (The Lyric/The Gaiety) & Hedda Gabbler (The Abbey)

Sinead McKenna – The Gigli Concert (The Gate)

Davy Cunningham – Grounded (Project Arts Centre)

 

Best Sound Design

Dennis Clohessy – Through a Glass Darkly (Project Arts Centre) & A View From the Bridge (The Gate)

Mel Mercier – The Shadow of a Gunman (The Abbey)

Conor Linehan – You Never Can Tell (The Abbey)

The Importance of Being Earnest

Director Patrick Mason reunites with Marty Rea and Rory Nolan, the double act from his 2009 production of The Rivals, for an elegant production of Wilde’s comedy of dual identities.

 

Algernon Moncrieff (Rory Nolan) is a confirmed Bunburyist; evading formidable aunt Lady Bracknell (Deirdre Donnelly) by dint of imaginary invalid friend Bunbury, who is at death’s door whenever she issues invitations. Algernon is determined to unmask his friend Ernest Worthing (Marty Rea) as a secret Bunburyist after finding a card revealing him to be Ernest in town, but Jack in the country. Jack insists he is merely maintaining a high moral tone for the benefit of his ward Cecily (Lorna Quinn) by the invention of disreputable brother Ernest, whose outrages necessitate frequent trips to London. But when Jack’s new fiancé, Algernon’s cousin Gwendolen (Lisa Dwyer Hogg), announces she could only love a man named Ernest, and Lady Bracknell declares Jack’s unknown parentage an insurmountable objection, Jack’s engagement seems doomed. And that’s before Algernon helpfully complicates matters with some absurdist Bunburying…

Designer Francis O’Connor spoke in his Gate Lab talk of producing a space of ‘vivid neutrality’ hiding playfulness and tricks; from Oscar’s visage faintly imprinted on the back wall, to a toy train running on tracks laid into the floor for Act 2’s shift to the country, to the startling ejection of rows of champagne or filing cabinets from a side wall when given a push. Panels in the back wall open to reveal Algy’s vases full of perfect green carnations, bucolic countryside impressions, and Jack’s massive portrait of Queen Victoria surrounded by eminent Victorians. O’Connor’s costumes visually cue Mason’s take on the characters: Algy is the perfect aesthete, his blue suit perfectly fitted to his decor, Gwendolen is a chip off the old block, her lavender outfit a variation on her mother’s dress, and Jack is trying too hard to pass as an Establishment worthy, his dark clothes always too sombre. Even Jack’s servant is off. Lane (Bosco Hogan) is in insouciant synch with Algy, but uncertain Merriman (a Fassbendering Des Keogh) is nearly clobbered by filing cabinets, makes heavy weather of clearing away Cecily’s books to lay the table, and runs away whimpering after serving Gwendolen detestable tea-cake.

It’s instructive to note the Rea/Nolan double act’s contrast to Shackleton/Murphy in Smock Alley’s recent Earnest. The business of the last muffin here sees Algy magnificently insouciant and inert, not mischievous and active, with Jack’s despairing throwing of a handkerchief over the muffin tray, rather than engaging in a tug-of-war for it, summarising Rea’s interpretation. This is a man at pains to be respectable but continually thwarted by others. Pushed on to the ground by Miss Prism (a droll Marion O’Dwyer), he attempts to muster an entirely imaginary dignity before asking Lady Bracknell if she’d mind awfully telling him who he is. Rea’s expression when Jack finds his real name in the Army Lists is a comic joy. Donnelly is a wonderful Lady Bracknell, eschewing outright scenery chewing for a forthright indomitability that makes quotable lines fresh putdowns, while Dwyer Hogg, the polar opposite of her Heartbreak House ingénue, vamps it up as Gwendolen, with a Brackenellian imperiousness towards Cecily. Mark Lambert, so rambunctious in that Heartbreak House, seems underused as Canon Chasuble; amusingly rendered a relation of Peter Cook’s Very Impressive Clergyman; but complaining that supporting players have too much star power clearly points to an embarrassment of riches.

Mason had wondered what he could bring to another production of Earnest; the answer was reforming an unbeatable trio of himself, Rea, and Nolan.

5/5

The Importance of Being Earnest continues its run at the Gate until the 30^th of January.

The Importance of Being Earnest

Smock Alley presents a spirited production of Oscar Wilde’s classic comedy in which the setting of Victorian drawing room and garden receives an unusual interpretation.

Algernon Moncrieff (Kevin Shackleton) is a confirmed Bunburyist; evading his formidable aunt Lady Bracknell (Valerie O’Leary) by dint of imaginary friend Bunbury, an invalid who lives in the country and is at death’s door whenever she issues invitations. Algernon is determined to unveil his friend Ernest Worthing (James Murphy) as a secret Bunburyist after finding a card revealing him to be Ernest in town and Jack in the country. Ernest, whose name is actually Jack, insists he is merely maintaining a high moral tone for the benefit of his ward Cecily (Aislinn O’Byrne) by the invention of disreputable brother Ernest, whose outrages necessitate frequent trips to London. But when Jack’s new fiancé, Algernon’s cousin Gwendolen (Clodagh Mooney Duggan), announces she could only love a man named Ernest, and her acidic mother declares that Jack’s unknown ancestry is an insurmountable obstacle to marriage, Jack’s engagement seems doomed. And that’s before Algernon decides to helpfully complicate matters with his most ridiculous Bunburying…

Marcus Costello’s startlingly green set serves as garden and drawing room with shrubbery in the shape of a piano revealing itself as a functional piano. There is also the added surreal touch of dresses hanging with lights inside them as eccentric garden decoration. Olga Criado Monleon’s costumes foppishly cast Jack in beige and Algy in blue, but excessively render unfashionable Cecily in a dress that’s almost a repurposed table-cloth. Initially you fear that director Kate Canning is attempting a Jordan-style queering of the text, but that approach quickly dissipates; though Charlie Hughes playing Lane, Merriman, and Canon Chasuble, leads to a major quibble. Lane is rendered with a jiving walk that’s as disconcerting for the character as Jeeves being played as Riff Raff, and Merriman becomes Worzel Gummidge, for the purpose of physically differentiating from Hughes’ main role as the entertainingly nervous Canon. O’Byrne also overplays vocally the girlishness and exaggerated innocence of young Cecily to contrast Duggan’s sultry Gwendolen.

And yet such complaints stand as naught against the whole production, as any gripes are swept away by the accelerating comedic momentum of Wilde’s script, and a deluge of delirious nonsense from the double act of Jack and Algy. Canning contrives some wonderful business. Jack and Algy engage in a tug of war for the silver tray bearing the coveted last muffin as Jack grunts his pained dialogue, while Katie McCann follows up one of her deliciously fake social laughs as Miss Prism with a death-stare at Jack and Algy for their effrontery. Shackleton and Murphy faced the challenge of playing roles that Rory Nolan and Marty Rea take on in a few months in the Gate’s production, and they can proudly boast that they equalled that proven double act in moments such as Jack first meeting Algy at his country estate. Duggan meanwhile adds knowing sauciness to Gwendolen’s dialogue that unnerves Jack terrifically, and seems to rediscover Wilde’s subversiveness.

Plays that are as quotable and almost over-familiar as Wilde’s offer their own hazards, and it is to this company’s credit that they sparkle.

4/5

The Importance of Being Earnest continues its run in Smock Alley until August 22^nd.

Michael Shannon & Bodies That Can Never Tire

 

Brace yourselves! Michael Shannon has been confirmed to attend International Literature Festival Dublin on Friday 22nd May to participate in Bodies That Can Never Tire, the Festival’s celebration of William Butler Yeats’ 150th Birthday.

“That he follow with desire/Bodies that can never tire”

In WB Yeats’ great play, An Baile’s Strand, Cuchulainn is asked to take an oath to defend the country. Against his will he agrees and sings the oath, including the lines above. Being half man, half god, Cuchulainn himself is a ‘body that can never tire’, but in these lines Yeats focuses on the artist’s inner drive to satisfy dreams, visions and supernatural impulses. These ‘bodies that can never tire’ are different for everybody, and fuel ambition, obsession, and revolution. They are central to artistic creation, and the stuff of ‘the foul rag and bone shop of the heart’.

A unique celebration of the legacy of Ireland’s great national poet, Bodies That Can Never Tire will enchant in the beautiful surroundings of the historic Smock Alley Theatre at 6pm on Friday 22^nd May, with proceeds from the event going to Temple Street Children’s Hospital.

A specially commissioned piece interwoven with music, poetry, and spoken word, Bodies That Can Never Tire will showcase Irish actors Clark Middleton (Birdman), Sean Doyle (Fair City), Aoife Duffin (What Richard Did), Aoibhin Garrihy (The Fall), Lorcan Cranitch (King Lear, The House), and Maeve Fitzgerald (Gate’s Pride & Prejudice). Spoken word contributions will come from Katie Donovan (Rootling: New & Selected Poems), Deirdre Kinahan (Spinning), Patrick McCabe (The Butcher Boy), with music from composer Tom Lane (HARP | a river cantata), Songs in the Key of D choir, folk trio The Evertides, and hip hop artist Lethal Dialect.

And of course the star attraction is the spoken word contribution of Michael Shannon, a man whose name has graced the top of the best acting awards lists hereabouts numerous times in the last few years. Shannon is probably best known for his turn as General Zod in Man of Steel, and his driven government agent in Boardwalk Empire. But his most productive creative partnership has likely been with writer/director Jeff Nichols on Shotgun Stories, Take Shelter, and Mud. Shannon has done acclaimed theatre work as well as explode off the big screen with snarling charisma, so the chance to see him in the flesh on the Dublin stage is a rare one and to be grasped with both hands.

Booking

Tickets to all events are available online via www.ilfdublin.com

Box Office Filmbase, Curved St, Temple Bar, Dublin 2 (11am-6pm Mon-Sat, 12-5pm Sun)

T: +353 (0) 1 687 7977

E: boxoffice@ilfdublin.com

International Literature Festival Dublin features over 90 events in 19 venues over 9 days. Now in its 17^th year the Festival has grown to become one of the most prestigious events in Ireland’s literary calendar. This year attendees include Irvine Welsh, Jon Ronson, Paul Muldoon, Anne Enright, Alexander McCall Smith, Anne Applebaum, Elif Shafak and Oliver Jeffers.

Fast Intent present The Man in Two Pieces

Fast Intent are Theatre Upstairs’ Company in Residence 2015, and are about to begin their tenure with an original work, The Man in Two Pieces.

“Life is tough, lad, rotten tough, and when you get to my age you’ll see there’s no remedy to it, ‘cept magic” – Kerrigan.

The Man in Two Pieces is set in Ireland in 1921. After midnight Kerrigan’s Vaudeville Troupe rolls to a halt on the outskirts of a country town that could just as well be any country town. The Adonis unloads boxes, The Great Gustavo tries to look busy, and Kerrigan counts the takings from the night. Amidst this winding down a young boy sleepily pokes his head out from the back of the wagon and thinks ‘this must be the place’. A two-hander starring Gerard Adlum as The Boy and Stephen Brennan as Kerrigan, this is described as a play about the dreams that sustains us, the delusions that destroy us, and the magic that binds us together.

This is the first appearance in Theatre Upstairs by Stephen Brennan, a commanding presence at the Gate Theatre (The Real Thing, Hay Fever) and elsewhere (Phaedra), and is the first original play by Gerard Adlum, who has run the Theatre Upstairs’ Readers Group for several years. Some of Fast Intent’s previous productions in Smock Alley and Dublin Castle (Macbeth, Dracula) have been reviewed on this blog. The members of Fast Intent were later heavily involved in Dublin Fringe Festival-nominated premiere How to Build Your First Robot; with Gerard Adlum starring, Sarah Finlay directing, and Nessa Matthews creating the soundscape. Flying under their own banner again The Man in Two Pieces is directed by Sarah Finlay, with set design by Rebekka Duffy, sound design by Paul Farrell, visual design by Ste Murray, and original songs by Gerard Adlum & Nessa Matthews.

The Man in Two Pieces runs in Theatre Upstairs from 7 April to 18 April, and marks the beginning of Theatre Upstairs’ shift from lunchtime to evening performances. Show times are 7.00pm Tuesday-Saturday with 1.00pm matinees on Wednesday and Saturday. Tickets are 10e/8e concession, with light lunch included at matinee performances. Any tickets booked before midnight tonight receive an early bird 20% discount, and there is an opening offer of 7.50e for all tickets on the opening night. You can book at http://www.theatreupstairs.ie/the-man-in-two-pieces or 0857727375.